Rolling Restart to deploy 1.24 the week of 2008/08/18

I usually only post when something negative is affecting my business but mono is going to do wonders for the grid and deserves kudos even from the pessimists amoungst us. As I recompile my sciprts to mono and monitor their cpu usage in debug the difference is astonishing. scripts running at .5 drop to .07 and below.


It would be nice if there was an option to just recompile all scripts in one go becoause tracking the object locations is dificult with this buggy mono client that will show neither locations nor beacons. Im using 2 clients atm to track them down. any helpful hints from anyone else? really i want to recompile the worst offenders first and worry about the rest later so its the tracking them down part that is difficult.

kudos prospero, and bravo team mono. this should help with the load on literally everything.

What if I compile my scripts to Mono? I need to do that in the new RC, right? But what if my scripts are Mono, can people on the 1.19 viewer still use these new scripts?

Yes, Paulo. Scripts are run on the server. The only situation you'll find where new scripts won't work on older viewers are if they're using the new Touch detection features - the older clients don't know about those, so don't send data on where the touch was, so the server returns (-1,-1). A good scripter will code in an exception for this - either notifying the user that the script can't be used with that version of the viewer, or offering a drop-down menu with equivalent functionality.

...an evil scripter will *also* code in an exception, but will do something particularly nasty when detecting an older client...

I understand Buckaroo. Thanks!

#199 RamsesesIII - I'm also getting rather frequent viewer crashes - three in the space of a couple days where the 1.20 released veiwer almost never crashes. I have crash reporting on, so I hope the info is going to the right place.

I've noticed that my Gestures don't seem to be behaving properly in the 1.21RC0. When the Local Chat bar is open, the Gestures dropdown list is oredered differently than in the standard release - it seems to be in the opposite direction. Also, some of my gestures won't trigger either from the Gestures dropdown or by typing the trigger directly into the chat box. It appears that the triggers that at least start with capital letters are not recognized. These gestures work if fired off from the Gesture Preview panel and work under the standard viewer release. Anyone else seeing this, of have I just screwed some configuration somewhere?

You think that's a joke? Seriously, people do stuff like this on the web all the time, often with all kinds of self-righteous justification about encouraging people to upgrade buggy browsers.

I'd also like to add my thanks. The game I'm developing really has benefited from the extra memory and speed of Mono (I was able to get rid of a few scripts from the object, as well as a massive speed boost). It is now installed and the recipient is very happy with it.

One strange thing I've noticed. I have it email me logs periodically, which includes the output of llGetFreeMemory() and I noticed these two entries...

[20:21:32] 8372 bytes free
[11:33:19] 8878 bytes free

The free memory reported actually went up. Under the old LSL2 VM this never happened. I assume this is an artefact of Mono's way of managing memory?

Does anyone have a theory on what effect Mono has to the physics? I'm getting lots of IMs from (angry) customers that claim my items aren't Mono-compatible, while I was under the assumption no existing items should be affected if the VM was already running.

All tests I have done on the beta have been working fine and things are also running flawlessly on my own land, which is already running Mono afaik. I can compile old code to Mono without issues, and that's also working ok.

But there are certainly a (large) number of sims that have their scripts dying on them because of the roll-out or their physical things go off-world and/or crash.

Since nothing is recompiled, this really isn't a script compatibility issue, so where can they complain ?

I logged into the forums to blast LL for such a messy and uncolated upgrade, our show yesterday was a shambles thanks for huge leaps in script timings, time dialtions, sim fps leaping about like a cork in a hurricane.
I had aleady downloaded the new RC and dumped it with 20 minutes as it broke voice, corrupted my GC runtime libraries and 'fuzzed' the normal sharp views I normally get for making machinima.

HOWEVER.... I managed to catch up with this tread before posting... I can see that LL are offering updates and taking time to speak openly on the forums, which for me, is a bigger step forward that Havoc4 or Mono ever will be.

The only real comment I will make to LL now is this: Your technical team are aware that there are companies that have offered to write or amend existing software, that will simulate variable loadings on platforms such as SL, they can simulate almost as real as it gets. Why are LL wasting resources on Beta Grid, when this would give better internal feedback to potential issues?

As one of the few that currently earn my living within the VR platforms, STABILITY is paramount for business. Missing out being able to chat with your friends in one location, and having to go to another is only an inconvience, having a lot of angry customers/clients bombarding you because their systems won't work, finding you cannot fix them because all the perms have changes blocking even the creator gaining access, finding that items you have for sale, now revert to being copiable, trans and mod, is equivilant to the Banks leaving the safe doors open over a weekend and forgetting to turn on the alarms.
I would swap STABILITY for SECURITY anyday. Either way, we do not seem to have gainned either for the past 4+ years I've been here.

I contacted 5 Lindens online yesterday morning that were all ingame, giving information about I and some others, could gain permissions to 'do things' on Linden Owned land that would make a Hurricane look like a bad case of gas(wind), 2 responded, 1 gave me a typical paragraphed respons suggesting I file a jara or go to support pages for help, the other did respond in greater detail, the other 3 didn't respond at all. This wasn't a 'I cant rez my sexgen bed' type of call, but the responce might have just as well have been. Just as well I am an honest person, otherwise I could have created havok and potentially made some quite high personal gains. I do know that this is not open to the average Joe on the grid, as it did require some knowledge and poking about before it could be done, but I only discovered it while I was checking out why our own systems were so borked and non reactive.

Fascinating. I just logged-in with one of my ALT's, one that doesn't have friend-permissions enabled for any of my stuff. That ALT was unable to modify of copy anything I had rezzed. The main negative items I have found so far about the Mono upgrade, are these:

1. Animations don't work right.

2. My Security Guard is always a cloud. The few times he isn't, I walk away, come back, and he is a cloud again.

3. I can be working hard on a project, and suddenly I can't access any notecards or scripts inside of the given prim, which I'd been doing for hours. I can try again 1, 5, 10 minutes later, and still get blank notecards, or blank, black, scripts. Re-logging seems to clear this up.

4. Logging-in is incredibly slow.

Umm, 1, 3 and 4 were just as problematic before Mono. 1 and 3 I think are down to the Asset Servers. 4 probably is too. I don't think the Mono upgrade involved any changes to this aspect of the service.

I have no idea what you're on about regarding #2


Looks like the new RC0 is a pile of rubbish, I'm still using the beta viewer, and apart from having to remember to point it at agni manually every time, it works fine (apart from the occasional camera screwup). I tend to switch between that if I want to work on a Mono script and then back to 1.19 if I just want to play the game without hassle.

That RC as far as I can tell was put out purely so that people can compile Mono scripts ASAP. They stated there were a number of known bugs. Personally I'd say just use it for compilation and then switch back to an actual, released client for everything else. It's a little unfair to come here and bitch about a pre-release client not being perfect, that's why it's a pre-release!

As for stuff losing permissions and becoming freely copyable. I've not experienced it myself, but if it's really happening, bitch away! I don't blame you in the slightest

I only wish I could come across this one. It's called an exploit and I haven't racked one of em up yet. Skip all of the rest of the Lindens and file it as an EXPLOIT. Whenever that happens the exploit manager is notified 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. In other words they wake him up for this if need be.

New name for the team

NO mo NO

guys 1/2 the scripts I convert error on a comment line whats with this

An extreme disappointment

after telling everyone how great this would be
it lives up to the Linden Standard

abortion


sorry until you people learn how to create a successful upgrade they will remain Linden
follys another episode of F TROOP RL

thanks but no thanks

I//WE would appreciate it if you at Linden Lab would present a more professional attitude

perhaps PULL YOUR HEADS OUT
accept that you do not know everything
ask for help from those of us who will give it freely
become professionals not matter what your leadership
realize we have been here many times before you have

we do love you for your efforts BUT

we would love to help you make us a success

You do cost us a lot of money with these updates that do not function

I can track sales by your failures

Please ask your core for help we will gladly assist and I think I speak for
all of us who pay for the play

All of the above is true... but have you considered, your wish is our comand? Every day, we are the white rats in the maze, beta test this, beta test this, got a problem, jara this, report that. Its the ONLY software company that has unpaid beta testers for over 4 years and are still going strong, despite having at least 2 million USD flowing over its counter everyday.

As I posted before, the real progress is the coming back to speak to the community. Once upon a time Lindens participated in the community more, we had help when needed. For 2 years, they have hidden behind a wall of Jara's, what this thread here tells me, is a willingness by some of the Lindens to come forward and communicate.
To the poster who offered threats LOL... thats about as effective as a handbrake in an airship, and about as desired here, as a floater in a pool.

If the reporting is giving you a hard time, try spelling it as J I R A.

Anyway, I do agree - having them back here is a good sign.

The jury's still out though, for me anyway, on if it IS a good thing. Getting all new forumblog software worries me a little, outsourced anything always worries me - Strife by himself did a fine job moderating, that this may be a forced particpation for Lindens (rather than something individuals want to do) worries me. It's a good sign but there's potential for things to turn out worse than they are now.

What about Microsoft, and all the people who beta tested Windows Vista RTM to make SP1 such a good release? (not to mention XP SP2, 2000 SP4, NT4 SP4*, 98 First Edition etc.)

Every piece of software ever released contains stupid annoying bugs like this, it is simply impossible to test every eventuality prior to release, a good software company is open and honest about this and gets it fixed ASAP.

The biggest difference here is that in the case of the Windows OS, a company relying upon it will generally test their own applications before deploying any service pack or new release. This is considered standard practice in the IT services industry and as anyone selling stuff on SL is basically selling IT services I would suggest you follow said practice.

Due to the nature of SL it's not possible for individual businesses to control when they upgrade. Fortunately LL provide a mechanism for you to test your services and products on upcoming new releases, it's called the beta grid. Anyone who is concerned about downtime or lost profits really needs to be on there testing before any new release.

The issue with this problem, of course, is that it was impossible to test the eMail functions as LL disable them on the beta grid. Perhaps this policy should be reviewed in light of this fiasco. Couldn't it just block all inter-grid email communications rather than all email fullstop?

* Of course you should be running SP6a with the update rollup and subsequent patches but SP4 was the first actual usable NT4 release IMO

I am going to close this thread.

The discussion thread for the 1.24.4 rollout is:

/348/55/279994/1.html